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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26568106">Omen</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubric/pseuds/rubric'>rubric</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Horror, Baby yoda as the antichrist, Dark, Gen, I am going to hell, Nightmare Fuel, evil baby yoda, lone wolf and cub vibes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 10:33:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,049</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26568106</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubric/pseuds/rubric</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Baby Yoda is Rosemary’s Baby and the Mando is in over his head.</p><p>(inspired after I read [the much better written] wonderterror by peradi)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Baby Yoda &amp; The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Star Wars Fanfiction Discord</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Omen</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/peradi/gifts">peradi</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He didn’t trust the client from the start.    He would have (<em>should have</em>) listened to his instincts.  That voice in his head that had saved his life more than once.  It whispered it was too good to be true.  To walk away.  The beskar, though.  The client’s crooked hint of a smile.  The client knew he had him, when he unfolded the cloth gently to reveal that shining bar.  Payment up front.  It set off every warning bell in his head.</p><p>
  <em> Such a large bounty for such a small package.   </em>
</p><p>The target. Species, unknown. Fifty years old, five, five hundred– it mattered not.  It was nothing more than a child.  Dressed, ridiculously, in austere monk’s robes, he thought as he stared at it for the first time.  Pale, ethereal green skin, faint lines of wrinkles barely dusting its upper lip.  Expressive, long ears that were two thirds of its profile.  It blinked curiously from two dark saucers that dominated its face <em>(the void of space)</em>.  It cooed and gurgled.  A well of emotion rose in his throat.  <em> Protect the child.  </em>He felt a buzzing in his head and a chill despite his armor.  Reaching out, he touched its hand. </p><p>The corners of his vision went red.  Somewhere in the distance he heard the cracking of bones.  Behind his helmet, involuntarily, he bit down on his cheek.  From the corner of his mouth he tasted blood. </p><p>He stared at the child as he snatched his hand away, shrinking back.   </p><p>
  <em> Such a large bounty for such a small package.   </em>
</p><p>When he delivered the child, walking away, the client’s words lingered in his ear.  It was almost a taunt, a dare.  Curious, how they paid that obscene bounty but did not take the child off planet.  It was practically an invitation, keeping it there on Nevarro in that sloppily guarded safehouse, not whisking it away. </p><p>He was a professional, he repeated to himself.  He had already broken one rule.  Guild members asked no questions.  But he couldn’t shake off the thought of leaving it behind.  He remembered how coldly he shot that droid who wanted to terminate it.  Who insisted on it.  Was there a tinge of fear in its mechanical voice?  No matter, his blaster had fired before he had even finished the thought.  It was just… that the murder of a child (it is <em> not </em> a child) was so offensive, he told himself.  His conscience wouldn’t let him.  Right?</p><p>He turned around.</p><p>When the imperial bodies fell, he refused to scratch below the surface, to admit to himself that he felt no guilt, no pity, just a cold rage, and <em> eagerness </em> he’d never felt before when taking down an enemy.  Death had always been a necessary part of the job, not something to enjoy. </p><p>The battle lust was intoxicating.  Even the ozone of the singed bodies sung to him in a way it never had before.  Perhaps the olfactory filter in his helmet was malfunctioning.  He felt it in the other Mandalorians, too.  The way they fought together, for the alien creature.  It felt <em>right</em>.</p><p>
  <em> Protect the child.   </em>
</p><p>He spared the doctor, blubbering at the Mando that he had <em> saved </em> the creature (<em>for him</em>).  Although something whispered to him to cut him down, too.  <em> To gnash on his bones.</em>  He pushed the thought back.  He’d done what he came for, after all.</p><p>Now what.</p><p>—————</p><p>One one hand, the child did child things.  It cooed. It babbled.  And more often than not, if left alone, wreaked havoc, the way a child would.  </p><p>“Don’t do that.  It’s <em> not </em> a toy,” he’d admonish the creature lightly, when it had unscrewed the ball from a lever on the navigation controls on the <em> Razor Crest.</em></p><p>On the other hand, it watched too closely.  It sat there, far too still, in its cocooned pram.  As if absorbed in something more than a child’s thoughts.  Observing.  Judging.  </p><p>It never cried.</p><p>Sometimes when he stared at it he thought he saw something else.  He shook his head and grunted.  Space sickness, maybe.  </p><p>——</p><p>The Mandalorian’s dreams were getting worse.  </p><p>He’d never been a peaceful sleeper. His nightmares fed from the font of his memories. Running from the separatist battle droids, his dream legs moved like they were encased in carbonite, dragging no matter how fast he urged them forward.   </p><p>Recently, however, the dreams changed.  The droids became winged demons ravaging the city.  Residents and animals scrambled like ants, looking for refuge.  Razor claws appeared from the darkness as they descended, swooping down and catching person and beast alike.  The sounds of strangled screams as they vanished above.  Seconds later, the sickening snap of bones cracking. </p><p>In his new dreams, he stood watching from a distance.  The high ground.  Around him, the landscape was a scorched earth, spitting and oozing rivers of red, sulfur burning his nostrils. </p><p>He’d looked at his hand, wrapped around a black sword that glowed like a void and sucked the light away greedily.  It pointed down at the villagers as they fled, conductor of a bloody orchestra.  Terrible.  Beautiful.</p><p>He woke up, finding himself sweating profusely despite the climate controls in his helmet. No ability to wipe his brow.  At first, he tried to ignore it.  Letting the sweat run, coating his cheeks, blinking his eyes over and over again to clear his vision.  </p><p>The third time he had the nightmare, he could no longer resist.</p><p>He climbed from the bunk, and scanned the room. The child was in its egg-shape pram, sealed shut.  For all the world could tell, sleeping.  Still, he ascended the ladder to the cockpit, locking the hatch behind him.  The beads of hyperspace stretched out beyond the viewport, guaranteeing his privacy.</p><p>There was still that anticipation of dread, that <em> wrongness, </em>every time.   </p><p>With a sharp inhale, using both hands, he peeled off his helmet. </p><p>Grabbing a rag, he sopped his face gently.  The moisture turned the rag from grey to a bruised purple. Then, he reached behind his head, feeling the curls matted to his skull.  He pressed the rag back there, swirling it in efficient movements.</p><p>It was only a few seconds, really.  He brought the rag back from behind his head, ready to put it down and re-affix his helmet, when he stopped and stared.</p><p>There, in the folds of the rag, were two clumps of loose locks. </p><p>Frantic, he reached a hand back to re-examine his skull.  There.  Where there should have been hair, a smooth patch of pebbled skin.  A bald spot.  He continued to explore.  Pulling his hand back to his face, he stared at the fresh strands matted to his palm.</p><p>There were no mirrors on the <em> Razor Crest. </em>  It was not the Way.  </p><p>He looked inside his helmet and found more loose clumps of hair pooled within.  A pit of dread formed in his stomach.   </p><p>———</p><p>“Does the little one want a cup of bone broth?”  The woman offered.</p><p>“Yes.”  He shivered. </p><p>He looked at the child.  Its ears were curled back in a pitiful, helpless expression.  But the <em> hunger </em>in its tiny black orbs.  A flash of sharpened teeth. </p><p>Later: they sat around a campsite, sharing provisions from the hunt.     </p><p>“I guess that thing’s a carnivore,” his friend had said lightly, watching as the child gnawed greedily at the charred meat from the spit.</p><p>———</p><p>They were high on their recent victory.  Outside, the villagers revelled late into the night.  The shocktrooper had been drinking.  She kneeled in front of him as he leaned against the wall of the hut. He tilted his head back in invitation, brushing the back of her head gently with one hand as she fumbled eagerly at his pants.  </p><p>Suddenly Cara stood up, frustrated. </p><p>“I can’t do it, Mando.  It’s <em> watching </em>us.”   </p><p>A finger pointed at the tiny green creature, sitting on a pile of rags, in the corner of the hut. Its stared, unblinking.  </p><p>The woman fled in a huff, leaving the Mandalorian half-exposed, confused.  Where she once knelt, an image flashed before him.  Cara, naked in a pool of blood, bones crushed, eyes blank.  </p><p>There was an unsettling feeling as he realized his arousal was not dampened.  In fact, he had never been harder. </p><p>———</p><p>“I could bring you in warm, or I could bring you in cold,” he remembered himself once offering to his targets.  A choice.</p><p>These days, they came cold.   Every time.   </p><p>Shooting them down, impaling them, crushing them between walls– he was rewarded with a satisfying hum in the back of his head, and visions of molten fire.  </p><p>From the corner of his vision he swore he saw the child’s eyes, following him.  But no, the child was on the ship.  Or with some guardian, one who mysteriously emerged whenever they landed on a new planet.  The mechanic on Tatooine, staring at it with blank devotion as she cradled it in grease-covered palms.  The Ugnaught on Arvada-7, who crafted the newly armored pram in a single ten hour session, not eating or drinking, falling unconscious in a dead faint when it was complete.  The widow on Sorgan, pleading for the Mando and the child to stay, hysterical when they had refused. </p><p>“The child is special,” a Twy’lek had hissed to him between teeth filed to razor points, tiny fires glinting in the reflection of her eyes.</p><p>———</p><p>The shock trooper was strong, he had to admit.  Killing time on the long flight in main hold of the Razor’s Crest,  their arms were locked together in an arm wrestle.  He watched her eyes narrow in concentration as she grunted against the pressure of the Mandalorian’s fist.   Neither seemed to have the advantage, at this point.  He felt his groin pool with excitement.  </p><p>“I got you, Mando.”  She insisted between gritted teeth.</p><p>“Care to double the bet?” He offered, teasingly. </p><p>He liked her, he thought.  He wasn’t going to let her win, though.  He pressed harder.</p><p>Suddenly, Cara coughed.  Both of her hands flew up, grasping at her throat, breaking the stalemate.  </p><p>Something invisible was choking her, in earnest.</p><p>The Mandalorian swung his head to the side.  There, the child stared blankly, brow furled.  A tiny hand curled out toward the shock trooper.</p><p>Images of cracked bones danced in his vision.  </p><p>“No, no!” The Mandalorian called out, pleading with the tiny creature as he grasped him with both hands.  “Stop! Cara is MY FRIEND!” </p><p>He wondered at the truth of his words, then.</p><p>———</p><p>His dreams got worse.  His skin crawled with an invisible itch.   Tearing off one of his arm bands, he found the skin raw and peeling, exposing a mottled greyscale underneath.  </p><p>Under his helmet, his hair was completely gone. </p><p>——— </p><p>The tribe had sheltered them, at first.  Then the mysterious sickness fell. First the animals, then the children.</p><p><em> Ori’dush. </em>  Evil, they whispered.  Crooking fingers at the alien child. He was rejected.  Forbidden from staying with the tribe, though not quite cast out.  He still followed the Way, after all.</p><p>———</p><p>A week later, he peeled off his breastplate armor, and the skin came off with it.  Underneath, grey scales rippled.  </p><p>———</p><p>He wandered, the child his only companion. </p><p>The other bounty hunters whispered.  He’d always felt their eyes, sizing him up. The Mandalorian bounty hunter with the reputation for unfailing <em> competency, </em> walking into a seedy cantina.  The best in the parsec, it was said.  But it was different, now.  Sure, he was wanted now, by the Guild.  But there was something else.  Every bounty hunter from here to the rim would have once stepped up to challenge the famous Mandalorian, if only for the story.  Or a chance at the beskar on his back. </p><p>On the dusty plains of Nevarro, the blistering sand on Tatooine, the icy flats of Maldo Kreiss, the same reaction.  The Mandalorian demon, they whispered, as they cleared a perimeter.  The walking death.</p><p>———</p><p>The thing that was once a Mandalorian stood in front of the crashed TIE fighter, waiting.  Eventually, the tip of a lightsaber blade emerged.  Not just any lightsaber.  Ink black, it sucked away the light ominously even as it carved an exit for the passenger trapped inside.  </p><p>Beneath his helmet, the Mando smiled.  It would be his, soon.  It was his destiny, the voice in his head whispered.</p><p>Beside him, the child nodded approvingly, its black eyes two fathomless dark orbs. </p><p><br/>
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